Graduate Admission

Requirements for admission include:

APPLICATION DEADLINE: December 1, 2024 at 9pm(PST) for Fall 2025 Graduate Admission

Deadline is December 1 for the following fall semester.

ASE receives a large number of applications every year. Our review process is complex as we are an interdisciplinary department and we involve many different faculty members in the reviewing of applications. We are also subject to tight University fellowship deadlines and so we encourage all applicants to submit their materials as early as possible so that we can alert you if your application is in any way incomplete. Our hard deadline is December 1 and no applications submitted past this deadline will be considered.

FINANCIAL AID

Fellowships, teaching and research assistantships, and other forms of financial aid are available to qualified candidates.

APPLICATION MATERIALS AND RESOURCES

• Spotlight: USC (An on-campus program for prospective graduate students)
• Step by Step Admissions Guideline
• REQUIRED APPLICATION MATERIALS CHECKLIST
• USC Online Graduate Application
• Applying for a Fee Waiver (All fee waivers must be approved by USC Office of Graduate Admission prior to application submission.  This means the fee waiver should be submitted ahead of time before the application deadline of December 1st.  Please note, fee waiver approval can take approximately 3 to 4 business days, so if you must make sure to plan accordingly.)
• USC Graduate School Fellowships
• External Sources for Funding Graduate Study
• USC Financial Aid
• Frequently Asked Questions about Applying to the Doctoral Program
• 2024-25 Core Faculty List
• 2024-25 Affiliate Faculty List

A completed application consists of the following materials: USC’s online application, an official set of transcripts from all higher education institutions attended, a 1,000-word essay on your professional and research interests(aka personal statement), a curriculum vitae, a scholarly writing sample, and three letters of recommendation. Additional test scores from TOEFL or IELTS are required for international graduate students.

We will initially accept copies of official transcripts in order to help you meet our application deadlines, but please be aware that no offer of admission or financial aid is valid without an official set of transcripts. It’s a good idea to request them early!

The personal essay (maximum length 4 pages, double spaced) should describe your professional and scholarly goals, and your proposed research interest. This is a very important part of the application process. Generally speaking, the more specific you can be about your research interest, the better the statement will be, as this will help faculty in assessing your readiness and suitability for Ph.D. work. Applicants should also use the essay as an opportunity to address any possible issues with the application, for example a relatively low undergraduate GPA, or extensive professional/creative work experiences which led you to decide to pursue a Ph.D.

Finally, we also require three letters of reference. We strongly recommend that the applicant seek letters from people who can speak to their scholarly potential — this usually means professors. If you have been working for a number of years, you might include one letter from an employer, but you still should have some from past instructors or other scholars/artists with whom you interact. Generally, it is not a good idea to have your friends and loved ones write letters for you.

If any one of these materials is not included, your application will be considered incomplete. In some cases it may still be reviewed, but it will clearly be at a disadvantage. In other cases, it will not be reviewed at all — it is at the discretion of the director of graduate studies.

For more information, contact the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity directly:

Department of American Studies and Ethnicity
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2534
(213) 740-2426
aseinfo@dornsife.usc.edu